The present invention is related to the field of gaming jackpot manual payments, and more specifically to a method for electronically corroborating a jackpot manual payment to a player.
Gaming machines operate via collection of player bets at the machine. A gaming machine is structured to award a winning value (jackpot) on a random basis. The gaming machine further can award a variety of jackpot values based on different parameters, such as bet amount, bet multipliers, combinational factors, and the structure and rules of the particular game.
Jackpot awards can be paid to a winning player via triggered dispensing of coins or other objects of value from the gaming machine. Gaming machine dispensing is generally used for lower value jackpots. For larger jackpot values, however, unsupervised dispensing from the gaming machine is undesirable as available storage space in the gaming machine for coins or tokens is limited. Further, unsupervised jackpot payments through a gaming machine are more difficult to regulate and can provide opportunities for theft.
As an alternative to gaming machine dispensing, casino personnel can designate a casino payment attendant to hand-pay a jackpot amount to a winning player. This “hand-pay” procedure addresses the above concerns, and further increases the player's gaming experience in receiving personalized attention from the casino staff.
Unfortunately, hand-payment of a jackpot presents several disadvantages. Jackpot hand-payment by a single attendant without a corroborating witness also offers the opportunity for employee fraud and embezzlement. The requirement for payment by a casino employee (casino payer) increases the labor cost of the casino.
Moreover, casinos require two casino personnel to review the jackpot and witness the jackpot payment to the winning player, as is mandated by state or other governmental regulation of gaming operations. The time required to verify and complete a witnessed jackpot payment increases the overall time for the jackpot payment process.
As well, casinos typically suspend or lock a winning gaming machine until the jackpot can be verified and paid. The player's gaming experience thus is negatively impacted:
the player must wait for the jackpot payment and is unable to resume gaming while the gaming machine is suspended. The time during which the gaming machine is locked also negatively impacts potential casino revenue.
A player may play a gaming machine for a period of time, accumulating winnings on the gaming machine, e.g., as credits. At the end of play, the player may wish to “cash out” and receive the accumulated winnings as cash or other takeaway value. If the cash-out amount is greater than an amount traditionally paid from the hopper, casinos generally employ the conventional payment procedure detailed above for hand payment of a jackpot.
The invention will become more readily apparent from the following Detailed Description, which proceeds with reference to the drawings, in which: